Sunday, October 17, 2010

Sunday Afternoon Rant against Meggie Mac and M. Dowd

Ever since Meghan McCain started to blab about being a voice for young "conservative" women, I've developed a certain "attitude" towards her. Maybe it's because of her arrogance in feeling like she can speak for all young conservative women. As someone a year old than Meggie Mac, this bothers me a tad I suppose. Maybe it's because she feels that the only way the Republican party can return to prominence is to become more "moderate" and to become a "big tent" party. Maybe it's because her like mannerisms, disposition, and like rhetoric don't necessarily represent as young conservative women classy or articulate. Over the past few weeks, McCain has whined about the media coverage, ironically by writing a Daily Beast about it and spouted nonsense on some Sunday morning show just today. Perhaps the fact that I'm even blogging about her shows that perhaps she holds some relevance in my mind, or perhaps I'm simply ranting because I have a little bit of free time on a Sunday afternoon. What McCain (and often her dad) need to realize is that the reason the Republicans lost prominence is because they became more moderate. Why vote for a moderate, squishy Republican if you can vote for a Democrat? The Republican party does need to force a big tent; they need to articulate how personal liberty, strong national defense,and pro-life values really do reach across all demographic barriers. What's the point in having a big tent if the tent pegs are driven in to squishy ground? The tent is just going to collapse.

Then, there's Maureen Dowd, generally a good source of liberal amusement. Dowd is pouting today in her NYT column about the "mean girls" like Palin, Fiorina, Angle, and O'Donnell who are taking on the liberal eunuchs and women. These are strong women who are taking on the likes of Obama, Boxer, Reid, and the bearded Marxist on the records of the individuals. Apparently, when Boxer disrespected a military man and Pelosi wanted to name a landfill or waste area after President Bush, that was acceptable behavior. I hope that I'm never clouded enough by my political bias to not call a spade a spade. If the likes of my political heroines--Palin, Bachmann, Fiorina, Haley etc--ever cross a line, I hope that I'm able to recognize it and want them to act respectfully. However, at least for the time being, I have not seen that in these ladies. I also haven't seen that kind of objectivity in Dowd.

I will say the same thing about pseudoconservative twentysomethings who claim to speak for all young conservatives and "feminist" columnists who try to push that there way of thinking is indeed enlightened thinking that I did about Emily's List's response to Governor Palin's SarahPAC video in a Conservatives4Palin post in August:

For Governor Palin and conservative and independent women throughout America, it's not about being placed in the "women" box of identity politics. For conservative women, it's not about Governor Palin speaking for us; it's about being able to speak for ourselves. This is the kind of worldview that Governor Palin espouses and supports in candidates whom she endorses. It isn't about government dictating to female small business owners how they must run their business or about levying burdensome taxes on them. It's about removing burdensome regulations and taxes that allow these business owners to increase their inventory and their staff--both of which help fuel the economy. This allows these women to speak and act for themselves. It's not about creating more government programs to "provide" for women. It's about creating an environment for women to manage their budgets and their households, and it's about ensuring that the money spent on government programs now isn't going to mortgage the future of these women's children. When Governor Palin wants to advocate for First Amendment rights, she is not about stifling dissenting opinions, but it's about ensuring that a double standard isn't applied, even if the women she is defending has been less than complimentary to her in the past.

Governor Palin hasn't made it her goal to be the voice for women, but in this process, in many ways, she has become just that. She speaks for us because she advocates for women to speak and act for themselves. It is not about placing women or any other demographic group in a certain box, it's about allowing them to speak and act for themselves.

So, again, you ladies don't speak for me. Identity politics are a thing of the past.